Noise

With tiny, high pixel count chips noise is always going to be an issue, and to a large degree this is more a test of the effectiveness (both measurable and visible) of a camera's noise reduction system. Designers have to balance the desire to produce smooth, clean results with the need to retain as much detail as possible (if you blur away the noise, you blur away image detail too).

What we said about the H3 holds true for the H10 as well. Noise and the effects of its reduction are visible at all ISO levels. Up to ISO 400 the H10 does comparatively well, striking a good balance between noise reduction and retention of image detail. At sensitivities higher than that things get a little nasty. ISO 800 is bad, ISO 1600 is firmly based in the emergency camp and one can only speculate why Sony even bothers to offer an ISO 3200 setting, the results are amazingly similar to the ones you get out of the Watercolor filter in Photoshop.

ISO 100

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

100% Crops

Noise graph

Indicated ISO sensitivity is on the horizontal axis of this graph, standard deviation of luminosity is on the vertical axis. The graph indicates comparatively low noise levels at all sensitivities. Of course this doesn't mean that Sony has come up with some new 'Über-sensor'; noise reduction simply kicks in at base ISO and increases its impact at higher ISOs. This results in soft, blurred images which are lacking most of the image detail.

Low contrast detail

What the crops and graph don't show is the effect of noise reduction on low contrast fine detail such as hair, fur or foliage. An inevitable side effect of noise removal is that this kind of detail is also blurred or smeared, resulting in a loss of 'texture'. In this test the crops below show the effect of the noise reduction on such texture (hair) as you move up the ISO range.

100% Crops

ISO 100

ISO 200

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 3200

Again, (unsurprisingly) the image is almost identical to what we saw in the H3 studio tests. At close inspection you'll discover some blurring of fine detail even at ISO 100. From there things only get worse and at ISO 200 the noise reduction smearing is already more evident then you'd wish, and at anything higher you're sacrificing an increasing amount of detail for a noise-free image.

There's not too much difference between ISO 200 and 400 (both show some smearing) but above that the magnificent blonde hair of our 'model' turns into an unidentifiable yellowish mass. If you want fine detail and textures to be visible in your images ideally stick to base ISO but definitely never go any higher than ISO400.